Schiller possessed the art of admiring, an art so much more rare than the art of criticising. His eye was so absorbed in all that was great, and noble, and pure, and high in Goethe’s mind, that he could not, or would not, see the defects in his character. And Goethe was to Schiller what he was to no one else. He was what Schiller believed him to be; afraid to fall below his friend’s ideal, he rose beyond himself until that high ideal was reached, which only a Schiller could have formed. Without this regenerating friendship it is doubtful whether some of the most perfect creations of Goethe and Schiller would ever have been called into existence. We saw Schiller gradually sinking into a German professor, the sphere of his sympathies narrowed, the aim of his ambition lowered. His energies were absorbed in collecting materials and elaborating his “History of the Thirty Years’ War,” which was published in 1792. The conception of his great dramatic Trilogy, the “Wallenstein,” which dates from 1791, was allowed to languish until it was taken up again for Goethe, and finished for Goethe in 1799. Goethe knew how to admire and encourage, but he also knew how to criticise and advise. Schiller, by nature meditative rather than observant, had been most powerfully attracted by Kant’s ideal philosophy. Next to his historical researches, most of his time at Jena was given to metaphysical studies. Not only his mind, but his language suffered from the attenuating influences of that rarefied atmosphere which pervades the higher regions of metaphysical thought. His mind was attracted by the general and the ideal, and lost all interest in the individual and the real. This was not a right frame of mind, either for an historian or a dramatic poet. In Goethe, too, the philosophical element was strong, but it was kept under by the practical tendencies of his mind. Schiller looked for his ideal beyond the real world; and, like the pictures of a Raphael, his conceptions seemed to surpass in purity and harmony all that human eye had ever seen. Goethe had discovered that the truest ideal lies hidden in real life; and like the master-works of a Michael Angelo, his poetry reflected that highest beauty which is revealed in the endless variety of creation, and must there be discovered by the artist and the poet. In Schiller’s early works every character was the personification of an idea. In his “Wallenstein” we meet for the first time with real men and real life. In his “Don Carlos,” Schiller, under various disguises more or less transparent, acts every part himself. In “Wallenstein” the heroes of the “Thirty Years’ War” maintain their own individuality, and are not forced to discuss the social problems of Rousseau, or the metaphysical theories of Kant. Schiller was himself aware of this change, though he was hardly conscious of its full bearing. While engaged in composing his “Wallenstein,” he writes to a friend:—